Personally I always considered the social contract to be that the price of admission for a free social network / online community is that you need to put up wit

Personally I always considered the social contract to be that the price of admission for a free social network / online community is that you need to put up with ads and attempts to monetize the data, provided the latter isn’t an unreasonable breach of privacy. A free API never crossed my mind. It’s why I have to admit that I am not sympathetic to third-party apps like Apollo. They implicitly violated the social contract I recognize by providing users with an experience that circumvents Reddit’s attempts to make money. Reddit responded by finding a way to put a price on the ad-free experience.